Simple, Yet Effective Salon Video Ideas – The Salon Marketing Q&A #8

On this episode of The Salon Marketing Q&A, we look at simple, yet highly effective salon video ideas that can entertain and engage your audience.

The Salon Marketing Q&A: Salon Video Ideas Transcript

Welcome to episode eight of the Salon Marketing Q&A. My name’s Chris Brennan and every single week we will be here, live on Facebook to answer any salon marketing questions that you may have. We will get started in just a moment with the actual question of the day. I just wanted to highlight that if you don’t actually have the time at this moment to watch this entire episode live, don’t worry. You can find the recorded version available on our Facebook page, and I also take every single episode, and I put it on our YouTube page as well, so you can find it there. Just in case you guys get distracted during this live session ’cause I know how busy you guys can be.

Last time I was telling you that one of the main things I was working on for you was going to consolidate every single toolkit that Zoe’s put together on the Phorest blog and put it as a nice package, so you guys can have absolutely every single month covered for your salon marketing, so that’s nearly done and that’ll be available this week. You can find that on the blog, so that’s really exciting because we actually … every single month Zoe puts together these incredible … these incredible toolkits that contain SMS templates, email subject lines, graphics for social media, it’s really … a lot of work goes into them, and I want to make sure that you guys actually can access them at your … at your pleasure.

At the moment we actually have 10 of the 12 months because in July, if you remember, we actually can a 30 Days to Grow campaign, so instead of creating the toolkit for that, we created all the material for that, for 30 Days to Grow and Christmas we end up not really pushing Christmas stuff in December, so usually it’s more of us trying to get you guys busy in January, since your Decembers are usually slammed busy. That will become available this week once it’s up and live on the Phorest blog.

Now, let’s begin with today’s question. This question comes from Susanne from the UK and she says, “I keep hearing that we should be doing more videos online, but I have no experience with it at all. Can you give me some easy video ideas that don’t require too much work?” That is a question that we get quiet often. A lot of times whenever we broach the subject of video and social media, so it’s fantastic and I love to answer this for you.

Right off the bat let’s begin with the fact that I totally understand that the majority of the people watching this have no real desire to be doing what I’m doing right now, which is sitting in front of a camera and talking to an audience. I get that it’s a skill that you have to learn. I get that it can be uncomfortable at the start to learn it. At the same time that we say that, that’s just kind of what we’ve said before about when social media first came on the scene and a lot of people said, “I don’t really want to learn social media. I don’t really wanna go online,” and look at the impact that Facebook and other social platforms have had on your business and on this industry as a whole.

The reason I say that is, the next big wave is video and you can see this yourself if you check out your Facebook page. The majority of the material that you see on your newsfeed is actually video content. That’s where the audiences are actually drawing themselves to, so the more video that comes out, the more the audiences are getting used to it. That’s what’s telling us that it’s going to be very imperative that we get over our disgruntled feelings about having to do video and the people that actually get comfortable in front of a camera first are going to be the ones with the advantage first.

Right off the bat I would say that I understand that it’s tough, the idea of jumping in front of a camera, however, I can tell you that the more practice you do and the more times you do it, the less difficult it gets and soon enough, you’ll be so comfortable you wouldn’t even bat an eye at it. Especially, because it’s no longer camera based, like you can actually do it off of your phone. Your phone has enough high resolution, high-quality imagery, that you can actually shoot top quality videos from your phone, so you don’t have to worry too much about getting the brand new camera or the DSLR with the zoomable lenses. You don’t need that to embrace your audience and engage them with video.

Also, if you had this idea that you have to get a YouTube page and work off of that, you don’t actually have to do that either. I mean, it’s nice if you can take your videos and put them on YouTube, but it’s not a requirement as such. In fact, you’ll probably get more reaction out of your videos if you actually put them natively on platforms such as Facebook, such as Instagram and Snapchat, as well. One, two or three of those. I would recommend you focus on one of those platforms first, get comfortable then and after that, you can choose to move onto the next one, so that’s kind of an overview of where you should actually put your videos. I’d say, start natively on Facebook. That’s a great place to go. Facebook Live or start on Instagram.

Instagram is huge for this industry. It’s very visual friendly and a lot of your audience are going to be there anyway and I personally absolutely love using Instagram myself, so that’s where I would actually start out, either Facebook or Instagram and I’d actually start off videos on these platforms. One, the other, or if you had time, both.

Let’s talk about …. because the main question was, what are some video ideas? Easy ones, as well. We’re not talking about having you guys shoot a bunch of different angles and edit it together with the nice background music and nice title card at the beginning. That’s a bit more advanced, so let’s start with some easy ideas. A lot of these ideas involve putting the camera onto yourself or a teammate so that you can actually embrace and engage your audience through the art of video.

I’d say the first thing we can do is do a live Q&A session on Facebook or Instagram. That’s literally what’s going on right now. It’s me talking live, to you at this moment. It’s a lot of fun, actually. I’ve wanted to do this, but in my head I was like, “Oh, what if I mess up? What if I stumble on my words?” A lot of the barriers that you might be feeling yourself, what you think about live, but as a nice little trick or a thing that I’ve noticed was, once I’m live, I don’t actually mind those flubs or when I miss say a statement, I just correct myself and move on and it’s because I don’t have a choice about it, I just have to keep going. I think you’ll learn that yourself as soon as you try out a Facebook Live or an Instagram Live. You’ll put the camera on yourself and you have no other choice but to just to keep going and you know what, you usually find your feet. You’ll find your way and you’ll be acing it in no time.

You can do a live Q&A session. That would be really great and for your clients that would be, so any kind of questions they might have. Maybe they have some followup questions from a service or a treatment, these kind of things. The one thing you can do is, you can actually encourage them to ask questions live, so you answer the questions as they come in. You might need to do a few Facebook Lives before you get to that point or maybe your audience will engage with you immediately. It depends on … from business to business or you can do what we’re doing now, which we’re leading to the questions part. The live questions.

What we do is we actually take in questions beforehand, then I present a long form version of the answer, live on Facebook. That’s really cool. You can do both, as well. You can select a subject and then as the question come in, you can answer them and keep going until your audience is quiet happy with the results. That would be a really fun one to do. There’s not too much prep to it either. As long as your asked a question and you can answer it, or maybe you could take turns, you and your teammates. What the real benefit is, is that your introducing yourself and your personality to your audience online and you’re very transparent because it’s live, so there’s no editing or tomfoolery when it comes to what you’re trying to convey or hide. You know?

The next thing up, as well, would be product reviews or demos. This is important because I think it’s an amazing idea. You have a salon. You have a business that sales products. What we’re trying to do is show this audience why you chose those products. Now, I want to highlight that I don’t want to turn it into an ad, it shouldn’t be too salesy because it’s social media, so we want to make sure it’s social. An angle I would take if I were you would be, take the notion there’s so many products out there. There’s so many, but you chose these select few to be in your business, to be on your shelf. Why? Why did you chose these? Because they have a certain quality to it? Because they have a certain style? Because they work well? How bout you highlight that. Instead of saying, “Buy this,” just say, “I absolutely love this moisturizer. I’ve researched loads and this one, for me personally, is a standout because,” and then you start telling ’em that way.

It can be really great because you’re not directly selling it to them, you’re bringing them in and introducing why this is in your salon, on your shelf to begin with. You could take this a step further, as well and actually a demonstration with this products, so you can basically put your money where your mouth is and go, “This is actually how it works.”

To go another step beyond that, you could actually run a competition and the winner actually gets a free service or treatment and you can actually film that right then and there on video, so you can actually get somebody in so you can use the product and then record them doing it while you chat to them and show them the benefits.

There’s a lot you can do when it comes to product reviews and demos. I think at the very bare minimum, what you’re doing is you’re highlighting your retail, which in our studies and our history and our experience with salons, it’s the one thing they always want to do more of is they want to push more retail. One way to push more retail is not to be pushy, just to be informative. These kind of things can be really great if you word it correctly and by word it correctly, all you mean … all I mean is that it’s the tone. What tone are you going for? You’re not trying to sell it to them, you’re trying to inform them, so that can be a really good idea.

We could also do customer testimonial videos. This could be amazing. I’ve never actually seen this, but I know that if somebody kicked it off, it would be so good and because we haven’t seen this, it’s quiet an original thing if your salon was the first one to do it.

With Phorest, you know that we’re all about the client reviews, that it’s one thing for you to say you’re great, it’s another thing for your clients to say you’re great. We can take it a step further and we can actually turn the camera on your clients after they’ve had a session and you can just request going, “Hey, would you take a moment to give us a video testimonial of your treatment, your service today and what you thought?” Just film their genuine reaction at the point where they’re the most thrilled, the most happy.

They should be … there’s going to be some people that are shy ’cause let’s face it, we’re all shy whenever we have a camera in front of us, but there’s going to be people that will be totally up for it. I recommend that we lead with your top and your best clients as well just ’cause they’re closer connected to your brand, so they might just be up for it.

That would be amazing to see on your feed, so you scroll through, you see video, you see video, you see book online and then there’s another video of a client who looks fantastic. Not just because of the service, but because of her reaction to what you guys have just done for her, so she’s right and ready to be interviewed on how amazing you guys did, so you’re going to get a lot of really cool expressions. You’re going to get a lot of really nice statements about you and because it’s video, we can actually see and here the emotion whenever she’s talking about you guys, which is fantastic. That could be a really easy one and this one, you don’t even need to be in front of the camera. Although you could be if you wanted to do a little two shot where she’s here and you’re here and you can literally interview her. That would be pretty cool.

We can also do, how to videos. I think these are really great and I think, in the past, I’ve has a few salon owners highlight how they’re a little resistant to how to videos. Their point of view was, they don’t really want to show their client how to do things because that’s their job, which is fair enough. It’s a point of view, one that I personally don’t hold because in my view and I think a lot of other people would agree with it, it’s that your service shouldn’t end once they walk out the door. Your service should continue even when they’re away from your business. One of the ways you could do that is to help them maintain that look or maintain that feeling after they’ve left because they will come back to you. If they’ve enjoyed the experience, they will come back to you, but they’ll come back to you even more if they feel like you’re looking out for them, more so then looking out for your business, so that’s a big thing. You can do that with how to videos.

Ideas for how to videos could be, no matter what the service or treatment would be, you’re just trying to help them maintain that outside of the fact. Outside of your business, so you can keep going a little bit longer and then you can come back to us. That kind of thing. I’ve seen this with some amazing restaurants where they actually put out cookbooks. I thought that’s such a great idea. Or they go on social media and the actually show you a recipe. Isn’t that great? We know it’s a difference between having dinner and going for dinner. One is an event. One is a thing you want to do, so I’ve always respected the businesses that help out when people are just looking for a little assistance outside of the business. It’s an easy one to do. You’re the expert in your field, so if anybody’s going to help them, it’s you.

Finally, we can cover something that isn’t salesy, that’s promotional at all and it actually just be news and updates. We see this with posts on a lot of salon sites as it is. They would put up birthdays for team members, promotions for team members, like somebody has just gotten the promotion, somebody’s just been engaged, things like that. Really nice, personal stories from your team and from yourself that you can share with your audience to really connect a bit more. It could be really great. It’s honest, it’s pure and it’s quiet transparent and you’ll be surprised at how many people react well whenever they’re introduced to these kind of statements and these kind of ideas, so that could be a really fun one for you as well.

It could be a little news on your business, such as your Christmas opening hours and stuff. That’s perfectly fine, but I think it’d be nice as well, to … and you could do this maybe once a week. You just go, “Here’s the update from this salon, so this how things are going,” and you’re making a stronger bond between your audience and you because you’re just inviting them into your business and you’re just involving them in what you have to say. That’s a really fun and easy one to do and again, it doesn’t take much prep and the more times you do it, the more comfortable you will be at doing it.

Those are, I think, a few ideas that get you guys started. I think enough for you at the moment. Just to recap that. It would be a live Q&A session. It would be a product review or demo. It would be customer testimonial reviews. Customer testimonials and videos. How to videos and news and updates. One of those, I’d say you kick off and you try it out yourself. I don’t think we should really wait or look to deep into or think about too much. I think one of the best things you can do is give your camera to somebody to film you and then just try it out. You might feel a bit stupid. You might feel like an idiot. I felt like that when I started this as well and I think I got a bit more comfortable, so the idiocy feeling that I had gradually left and went away, so I’m totally there with you. I know exactly what that feeling’s like and the best way to overcome that is just to do it because you know what? Video is the future for marketing and we might as well get there first, okay?

Thank you guys so much. I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you have any questions that you’d like answered on the Salon Marketing Q&A, please let me know. You can drop it in the comments box below or you could hit us up via email at letsgrow@phorest.com. Okay, guys. Have a great day and let’s grow.

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